April 4, 2020
It’s hard to believe that less than one month ago, we were celebrating the school bond passing. And now we just learned from Governor Whitmer that schools will be closed for the remainder of the school year. On behalf of the staff and students, we sincerely hope that all of you are safe and healthy and ask everyone to continue to follow social distancing guidelines, stay home and stay safe. Please stay tuned for more information from our school administration about what the governor’s order means for Schoolcraft and our students and how we will address it.
In the meantime, we’ve already started to develop our plan to give our kids and school staff the buildings they deserve. We are so grateful to the community for supporting the school bond, and we are so excited to get started! Here’s what’s happening.
Building Steering Team. We’ve created a steering team comprised of the following groups and individuals who will guide the project from beginning to end:
Triangle, the construction manager
TMP, the architect
Matt Dailey, Dave Powers and Matt Webster, the three school principals
Members of the school’s administrative team
Jill VanDyken, Wade Rutkoskie and Jennifer Gottschalk from the school board
Kory Bienz, parent representative
User Groups for Parent and Community Input. We are creating four user groups so that interested parents and community members can get involved. The user groups will focus on the following projects:
Competition-size middle school gym addition to high school
Grades 7-8 addition to high school
Athletic improvements
New elementary K-6 elementary building
Starting Now – Project #1: Middle School Gym. Dave Powers will lead the middle school gym project by gathering a small team of individuals who will use the gym, such as the gym teachers, the athletic director and some school staff. The architect will come up with a plan based on the team’s feedback, then share those plans with user group members for their input.
Starting Later – Projects #2-4. We are beginning with the middle school gym project because it’s a smaller project that we can get started on now. We want to save the bigger projects until the COVID-19 situation improves and we are able to have more interactive, face-to-face meetings.
How You Can Get Involved: User Groups. We welcome parents’ and community members’ input through the user groups. Please understand that these projects may require a significant commitment of time, and we don’t want people to jump in and out. Rather we’re looking for people who can invest in the projects from beginning to end. To keep things moving quickly, we may need to limit the number of people in each user group. Please let us know right away if you’re interested in participating in a user group by reaching out to Jennifer Gottschalk at jenniferjgottschalk@gmail.com. Be sure to indicate the project that you’re interested in.
Commitment to Communicate. We want to keep you informed about what’s happening with the buildings. Stay tuned to these communications for updates and information:
School board meetings
South County News Purple & Gold insert
School bond website – www.scs-bond.com
Schoolcraft Community Schools Facebook page
YES for SCS Facebook page
School newsletters (when school resumes)
These building projects would not be possible without all of you. Please know how thankful we are for your support, and how excited we are to move forward with you. If you have any questions, please reach out to me at jenniferjgottschalk@gmail.com.
Jennifer Gottschalk
Schoolcraft Board of Education President